Despite a previous commitment made by the network, NBC has rejected former MTV vice-president David Janollari’s “supernatural” series Conception – a program which had the potential to offend millions of Christians.

Originally announced as a “supernatural mystery drama,” Conception would have “tracked a modern-day immaculate conception on a large scale,” then followed the experiences of the various children and “shown how they’re destined to change the world.”

As the PTC previously noted, the program would have been produced by David Janollari, the man behind such sexually-explicit, teen-targeted programs as MTV’s Skins, which was so vile that the Washington Post called it “a repugnant, irredeemably nihilistic viewing experience [and] a new frontier in phoniness and filth”; The Hard Times of RJ Berger, an entire series about the size of a teenage boy’s genitals; I Just Want My Pants Back, about sex-crazed twentysomethings; and several other similarly unsavory series. This is the person who NBC once – but no longer – was comfortable with producing a religiously-based drama.

Though news sources speculate that the reason Conception was abandoned is that its premise is too similar to the upcoming miniseries Heroes: Reborn, an equally likely estimation is that the large amount of negative publicity surrounding the upcoming movie Noah – to which many Christians have objected due to the movie’s deviation from Biblical sources – and the popularity of the reverent movie Son of God convinced NBC that attempting to draw in Christians with a seemingly religious premise, and then offending them, is not the way to achieve success.

Christopher Gildemeister is the PTC’s Head of Research Operations. He began as an Entertainment Analyst at the PTC in 2005. From 2007-2016, he was Senior Writer/Editor, responsible for communicating the PTC’s message to the public through newsletters, columns, and the PTC Watchdog blog. Dr. Gildemeister holds a Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America.